The CSS Inspector was one of Cursor’s best features, especially for designers and front-end developers. Being able to visually inspect an element, identify its styles, and quickly make changes made the design workflow much faster and more intuitive.
Removing it has made UI work significantly less efficient. The feature helped bridge the gap between design and development and reduced the need to constantly switch between Cursor and browser DevTools.
Please consider bringing the CSS Inspector back, either as a built-in feature or an optional extension. It was an essential part of the workflow for many designers and front-end developers.
Yes mine also just disappeared. It’s so frustrating to loose this feature, as it’s hard otherwise to target nested items and such, without it! Please bring this back
I ended up downgrading Cursor from v3.12.10 back to previous v3.11.25 because the CSS Inspector is simply too important to my workflow. Losing the ability to visually inspect and target nested elements has been a major productivity hit.
Hopefully the team brings this feature back soon, as it was one of the strongest tools for designers and front-end developers.
Please bring back this EXTREMELY useful feature, why downgrade the functionality to me using plain language when I can just make the change directly and hand it to the agent. Useful for swapping between small changes/tokens to decide on what should be implemented. Great for drilling into nested components as the select element tool is not the easiest to use for this.
Removing the Browser Visual Editor was an astonishingly bad product decision. That feature was the single thing that meaningfully separated Cursor from every other AI coding tool. It justified paying $200 a month because it supported a real professional workflow: inspect the application, experiment with CSS visually, apply the result, and continue working in the IDE.
Replacing that with Agents Mode is not an upgrade. It is a forced downgrade into a slower, less precise, less controllable workflow. Cursor seems determined to push professional developers out of the IDE and into an agent interface designed for people who want to prompt their way through toy projects. Complex software development requires files, context, navigation, debugging, direct manipulation, and control. The IDE is the product. Agents should support it, not replace it.
At this point, OpenCode with a free Big Pickle model can produce comparable or better results without charging an absurd $200 per month. The Browser Visual Editor was the reason Cursor remained worth that premium. Without it, there is very little left that cannot be replaced more cheaply and let’s be honest more professional tier elsewhere.
My subscription renews in one month. If the Browser Visual Editor is not restored by then, my subscription will be canceled. Cursor has exactly one billing cycle to demonstrate that it still values professional developers rather than continuing the e-n-s-h-i-t-t-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n of the product into a vibe-coding toy. Plenty of developers are already looking for the exit. Removing unique, useful features while forcing unwanted workflows is how Cursor turns that frustration into cancellations.
I was shocked to see this feature removed from the Cursor interface. I hope the developers understand how important it is to maintain our workflows and utilize the tools we have, as they significantly impact our productivity and well-being. This tool was pivotal for targeting elements in the browser and obtaining specific results. Its removal has eliminated a key feature, which I consider a poor decision and a serious oversight by the development team.
I agree with others who feel this feature needs to be reinstated. If the development IDE moves away from tools that serve real-world developers effectively, we risk losing developers who seek alternatives that respect their established workflows and skill sets. Many of us do not want AI to take over our processes; instead, we want to guide and oversee our work to achieve the best results.
Dear Cursor Product Manager,
I’m finding it extremely difficult to work without the CSS Inspector panel. It was a vital part of my workflow, allowing me to quickly experiment, tweak styles, and fine-tune granular visual details without constantly switching to browser DevTools. Please, please bring this valuable feature back.
Br,
Paid Cursor User
There used to be an icon to open the design panel where you could change the padding, color tokens etc for a selected object in the cursor’s browser. I no longer see this in the UI (the icon to open it) after updating to the latest version
Steps to Reproduce
Open the IDE, load a local build, select an object, try to find the icon to open the design panel.
Expected Behavior
When you select an object, there should be an icon visible to open the design panel
The in-browser CSS Inspector panel (for tweaking padding, colors, and tokens on a selected element) was intentionally removed, which is why it disappeared when you updated.
The closest current workflow is Design Mode in the Agents Window browser: open the Browser tab, load your running app, and once the page finishes loading, click the pen icon in the toolbar (or Cmd+Shift+D). From there you can click an element to select it, then describe the change and the agent edits the code for you. Full steps are in the Design Mode docs.
One honest caveat: Design Mode hands the selected element to the agent rather than giving you direct property-editing controls, so the Figma-style visual editing isn’t available right now. If you’d like it back, adding your voice here helps us gauge demand: Please bring back the CSS Inspector panel.
Thanks for the explanation. I still think removing the CSS Inspector was a major regression.
One of its biggest strengths was how easy it made it to:
Quickly pick nested elements and inspect the exact element causing a layout or styling issue.
Instantly adjust padding, margins, colors, spacing, borders, and design tokens.
See live visual updates before deciding whether to apply the change.
Iterate rapidly without having to describe every small tweak to an AI.
That direct, visual workflow was incredibly efficient for frontend development. Design Mode is useful for larger changes, but it doesn’t replace the speed and precision of interactive CSS editing.
Please consider bringing back the CSS Inspector panel, even as an optional feature. It was one of the strongest parts of the browser experience and made debugging and refining UIs much faster.
Absolutely shocked you have removed this. Asking AI to constantly make adjustments is going to unnecessarily eat into token usage and take longer than just quickly iterating the design ourselves with the design properties panel!
i cannot agree with this feedback more. when i noticed it was gone today i was so upset. making small tweaks is now a HUGE headache. that panel was one of the BEST features, i used it all the time.
I was shocked to see this feature removed from the Cursor interface. We need this reinstated.
This was a major feature I used every session and everyday - I will be downgrading just to get it back.
